1. 20 Years of Spider-Man Stories Are Thrown Away, and Civil War Too

Originally: Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson were married in 1987. They remained married throughout the next twenty years. Over that time, certain characters close to Peter discovered his identity, and more importantly, during Marvel's 2007 event Civil War, which saw the integration of the Superhero Registration Act, forcing secret identities to be revealed, Spider-Man unmasked to the entire world, sparking one of the most exciting and important moments in comics that year.

The Retcon: Everything? Marvel editor-in-chief Joe Quesada cooked up the idea to dissolve Peter and Mary Jane's long standing marriage, as well as his public unmasking. When Aunt May is fatally shot following Peter's unmasking, the demon Mephisto presents Peter with a deal in the story arc "One More Day" - offering to make sure Aunt May lives in exchange for...Peter and Mary Jane's marriage? Yes, Mephisto's only desire was apparently for their love. Not Peter's soul. Not MJ's soul. Their love. Read that again. Ridiculous, no? But, that's how Marvel wanted it. Oh, and to sweeten the deal for themselves, Peter and MJ decided that they would do it, but only if Mephisto would erase Spider-Man's identity from public knowledge as well. There were other things retconned too, such as the return of mechanical webshooters and the resurrection of Harry Osborne, but none match the gravity of the marriage dissolution and cancellation of the unmasking that was performed only months earlier.

The Impact: What essentially resulted from this deal was an erasure of twenty years worth of stories that built upon each other. Comics are a continuing periodical medium, the foundation being the characters they feature. If there is no character progression, why would we still be reading after all these years? "One More Day" brought us back to the days of Peter Parker as a struggling superhero - which is part of his appeal, of course, but why can he not struggle with marriage? We saw Peter struggle with teenage awkwardness for most of his career, and again in Ultimate Spider-Man; do we need to see it yet again in current continuity, thus devolving the character instead of evolving him? The method that Marvel took to advancing their view of what Spider-Man should be was a slap in the face to long time webheads, as it basically tells them that the stories the are reading today might not matter tomorrow. Though, Marvel has claimed in interviews that everything still "counts", it's just minus the marriage of Peter and MJ. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that. Marvel certainly isn't the only publisher to do something so drastic that enrages fans (ie Jason Todd), but they certainly can't deny that their means was anything less than a lowblow. I can't help but wonder what J. Michael Straczynski must feel after "agreeing" to end his long tenured run on Amazing Spider-Man with "One More Day", negating every story he wrote for the five years previous. Then, of course, there is the changing of Peter's public reveal of his identity, which took place literally months before in Civil War. The unmasking was an event that garnered much media attention, and probably spiked sales a bit. More importantly, it gave a whole new range of options for story beats; something the company appeared to be on board with, having Aunt May get shot as a result of a connection with Spider-Man. Instead, Marvel opted to let everyone forget Spider-Man's identity, including those who were aware of it pre-Civil War, and retread the same tired tales that we've read countless times over. But congratulations, Marvel, as you have topped my list for the most shocking retroactive continuity changes in history.